That’s when I forgot how to breathe, and my eyes bugged out of my face so far that I was sure they were going to pop free and bounce across the fake grass. “Y-you’re Hades? Like the Hades?”
“Yeah.” Hades glanced at Spartacus, and raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you tell her I was coming?”
“I did, sir,” Spartacus replied with a shrug. “I think she’s fan girling.”
“Fan girling?” Hades smirked at me. “I haven’t had a fan girl in a long time.” Hades rubbed his chin. “Do you want an autograph or something? I’m not sure what the protocol is for a fan girl.”
“I’m not a fan girl,” I said, my cheeks flushing. “I was just a little shocked that you came here to talk to me.”
“Oh,” he sighed. “I’m not like my brothers. I try to be a people person, after all. It’s no fun spending eternity with a host who is all sorts of boring. It’s why I got the job, and well, because I like gold, silver, and big gleaming gemstones.”
“Yeah, we even have ninety day barbeques,” Spartacus chimed in.
“Accident free for five hundred years,” Hades said, flopping down on the turf in front of me and leaning back on his hands. “So why have you come here um… I’m not sure what the Egyptian term for Valkyrie is.”
“You can just call me, Lillim,” I replied, still half in shock that this was Hades.
“Okay, Lillim,” Hades said, smiling at me with his surfer boy grin. “What can I do you for?”
“Um… Well, it’s complicated.” I sighed. “See, I really just want to go back home. I got sent here by a magician, and I need to smash his face into a thousand bits. Unfortunately,” I gestured at Connor, “his soul is trapped in Ancient Egypt and the wolf wants to go save him.”
“And you thought that by entering into the Halls of the Dead you could go into the Egypt room, and what, go back in time from there?” Hades mouth compressed into a thin line as he stared at me, thoughts swimming through his eyes. “Did Kronos give you that idea?”
“Well… yes actually.”
“Swell,” Hades grumbled. “And he didn’t mention the name of the person in the Egypt room, did he?”
“No, actually, he didn’t,” I said sheepishly. I had the sinking feeling that Kronos had sent us on a task that would have horrible consequences… and that was if we succeeded.
“Of course he didn’t.” Hades rubbed his face with one pale hand. “See, us underworld deities have a problem. We have really bad people in our realms, and sometimes it’s easier to transfer custody of a person to an underworld of a different mythology. It limits the powers of really powerful, bad people. I don’t know if you noticed, but you probably had a lot of trouble with Apep down here.”
Was that why I hadn’t been able to form Apep into solid blades like Mattoc had? I’d thought it was just my inexperience, but maybe there was more? Maybe just being in the Greek underworld made my Egyptian powers harder to use? If that was true… I was more than powerless.
“So the Egypt room is where I keep prisoners traded to me from Anubis and Osiris. It links to their Greek room, where the worst Greeks and Romans are kept.” Hades narrowed his eyes, and it made me want to crawl into a hole and die. “And you want to release one of them?”
“Well… when you put it like that?” I murmured.
“And you don’t even know which one, but I’m guessing its Khufu.” Hades sighed. “He’s the one who had the great pyramid of Giza constructed.”
“If he’s such a bad guy, why would Kronos want him released?” I asked as Hades pulled at the fake grass with his left hand.
“I have no idea, but whatever my father is up to, it can’t be good.”
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked, gesturing at Connor and Thes.
“I’m not sure,” Hades replied. “Things have been weird in the Egyptian realm ever since Osiris vanished a few days ago. I’m half inclined to let you guys go in there just to see what’s going on. I’m worried that the spillover into my underworld could be disastrous, and it isn’t like I have a better plan...”
“So, let me get this straight,” I said, my eyes wide in shock. “You’re going to let us into the Egypt room to release one of its worst prisoners because you don’t have any idea what’s going on in Egypt? How do we know we won’t make it worse?”
“Have you ever made an omelet?” Hades asked, getting to his feet. “Sometimes you have to break a few eggs.”
A shudder ran down my spine as Hades walked toward the door, gesturing for me to follow. I took one last look at Spartacus who gave me a look that said, ‘go with it.’
“Why do I think I’m about to become one of those eggs?” I murmured to myself as the floor beneath us opened up and two giant skeletons pulled themselves from the ground. They scooped up my friends as Hades made a ‘hurry up’ gesture. Before I could do anything to stop them, the skeletons tossed my friends through the portal. I watched helplessly as Connor and Thes vanished with a flash of purple light. Hades raised one eyebrow at me and smiled.
“Good luck,” Hades said, making a ‘hang loose’ sign with his right hand. “Khufu is the one with the giant blue scarab pendant. Whatever you do, don’t touch the other mummies.”
Chapter 14
“What do you mean I missed meeting Hades?” Thes groaned, still rubbing his head. He was sitting on the black stone floor next to a humongous sarcophagus. It was covered in golden hieroglyphics that must have told some kind of story, but the Rosetta stone, I was not.
“Yeah, after your dumb ass was knocked out in a split second by a two-thousand year old roman gladiator, Hades showed up to chat with me.” I stuck my tongue out at Thes. “You missed it.”
“You should have woken me up,” he said, getting to his feet and looking around. “I’d have liked to meet him.”
I shrugged at him. “Once you’ve met one god, you’ve met them all.”
“You mean you’ve met more than one god?” Thes asked as he moved toward the bench I was sitting on.
“Yeah, a couple,” I said, smiling at him like it was an everyday thing, even though it wasn’t. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know.”
“I didn’t know meetings gods was a thing people did,” Thes held his hand out toward me. “Well, whatever you did back there, thanks for making it so I didn’t die.”
“No problem,” I replied, taking his hand and letting him help me to my feet. “Now we just need to find Khufu, and he can put his evil curse on you or whatever so you can go back in time. Then I can get the hell home and find my boyfriend.”
Thes narrowed his eyes at me as I spoke. “You don’t have to seem so jovial about leaving me to my almost certain doom.”
“It’s not you, it’s me,” I replied, bending down to examine the first of many thousands of sarcophagi. When Hades said he’d traded for a few of Egypt’s most notorious, I hadn’t quite expected to be surrounded by literally thousands of them. I’d figured maybe a hundred, tops.
“You know, you keep saying stuff like that and acting like you are a bad person,” Thes said as he walked up to the giant stone dais in the middle of the room and peered curiously at it. “But I think you’re really a good person pretending to be bad. I think you’ve had some crappy luck and that made you have to do things you wished you hadn’t, but news flash, if you were a bad person, you wouldn’t feel guilty.”
“When you slit someone’s throat in the middle of a kiss, then you can talk. Until then, keep your thoughts to yourself.” I turned away from him, staring down at the gilded hieroglyphs on the coffin in front of me as tears tugged at the corners of my eyes.
I felt Thes’ warm breath on my neck a moment before his arms wrapped around me, crushing me against his bare chest. He was so warm that it was like sitting next to a living heater. “It’ll be okay, Lillim,” he said before releasing me a moment later. “I promise.”
I spun, traitorous tears leaking down my cheeks as I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and flung th
e tears away. “You don’t get to tell me that. You’re going to save Connor, and I’m not. I’m staying here like a coward. So, no, you don’t get to tell me it is okay and give me hugs. That just proves you’re a better person than I am.”
“Lillim, I—” the sound of cracking stone filled the air as green light burst from the sarcophagus next to us. My tears were scattered across its surface, glittering like tiny emerald disco balls. Thes shielded his eyes, taking a step backward. The lid exploded in a spray of golden debris that threw me from my feet. I hit the ground hard, my vision going hazy as my head smacked into the stone. I lay there, for a moment, unable to do more than blink as a blurry form rose from the coffin.
“A mummy!” Thes cried, stepping in between me and the creature, one hand already half-transformed into a wolf claw. His claw glittered in the blue torchlight of the room as the mummy stepped over the lip of the coffin and onto the stone floor. Even from my position on the ground, I could tell she wasn’t very tall. How did I know she was female? Because she had boobs that even a millennia of wrapping couldn’t quite contain.
She stood there for a moment, whipping her head back and forth as the bandages surrounding her body flaked off of her like bits of ash. She tried to say something, but it was so muffled I couldn’t make out her words.
“What do you want, mummy?” Thes growled, his voice edged with a combination of hysteria and violence. Already things were beginning to ripple underneath his skin. In another minute, the terrified teenager standing over me would be in full on fight or flight form.
“Thes, calm down. Maybe we see what she wants before you try tearing her head off,” I called as I got to my feet and my voice echoed in the vast cavern.
He glanced at me, eyes wild. “What if more of them wake up and want to eat our brains or something?”
“She’s not a zombie,” I replied, shouldering past him and moving toward the mummified girl who had her head cocked toward us. “And she probably doesn’t speak English if she’s an ancient Egyptian.”
I reached out, very slowly, and lightly touched the top of her hand with my fingers. Her yellowed wrappings felt like a scratchy bed sheet that had been left out in the sun a bit too long. I extended my magic, allowing just the barest touch of it to flow through my fingertips and breathe across her skin.
“Hello, I’m Lillim. This is my friend, Thes. We mean you no harm.” Power flowed out of me along with the words, causing the room to heat up just a touch as my magic slid over the mummy. She looked up at me with linen covered eyes and started to say something, but the words came out mumbled.
She nodded her head once before reaching up and grabbing hold of the material covering her face. It disintegrated under her fingers as she pulled it free. The linen pads came loose and fell from her eyes. Her eyes burned like a pair of glittering amethysts as she opened her jaws, stretching the fabric around her face to the breaking point, and pulled a long, golden plate from her mouth.
The mummy girl worked her jaws a few more times while her hands scraped the rest of the fabric from around her face. She was beautiful. She had that natural beauty that made me have to try very hard not to hate her. Her full lips spread into a wide grin I was pretty sure would summon small singing birds as she clasped my hand.
“Thank you for waking me,” she squeaked. Her voice was so soft that it was like listening to the fluttering of butterfly wings. “I have been trapped here a long time.”
“It was an accident,” I said before I could stop myself, and a moment later I felt a blush burning across my cheeks.
“Of course it was.” She shook her head, auburn hair shedding bits of linen that cascaded around her like snow. “No one seeks to wake us down here, but now I can go home.”
I opened my mouth, about to ask her what she meant by that statement when the ground roiled beneath our feet like a writhing snake. I lost my balance, toppling forward, and grabbing onto the girl who clung to me with equal tenacity. Behind us, Thes hit the ground with a thump as the dais began to spew starlight into the sky. It cascaded off the ceiling, shooting across the stone and illuminating the room.
“What did you do,” the mummy called, glancing past me at the werewolf. Who did you awaken?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Thes said. “All I did was lean on the dais.”
“You had to have done something,” the mummy cried, pushing past me and shambling toward him. When she saw the dais her eyes went wide, and she pointed at it angrily. “You awakened Khufu! Of all people, why did you awaken him?”
“Aziza!” the word thundered out over the room, slamming into me with such force that it was like being punched in the eardrums. I careened sideway as the floor slipped out from under my feet. My body sprawled across the ground. The stone above us fractured with a sound that made my stomach clench. “Did you miss me, Aziza? Did I not tell you I would find my way back to you?”
“Khufu, stop this madness!” the mummy girl said, glancing back at me as her hands flew across the dais. Her face was awash with fear and panic. Evidently, coming back for her was a bad thing.
“I will do no such thing, jailer!” the voice boomed. It seemed closer now. I turned my head toward it as the ground stopped shaking. A huge shadowy form was striding forward, its features distorted by the torchlight.
“What’s going on?” Thes asked, glancing at me from the other side of the room. He took a step toward us, arms spread wide for balance. A huge onyx statue toppled over in front of me, crashing to the ground with a sound that nearly deafened me.
“Send me back, Aziza. Send me back home!” Khufu snarled, finally stepping into the light so I could see him. He wasn’t as big as I thought he’d be, perhaps only five and a half feet tall. His chin was covered in a black goatee while the rest of his head was shaved completely bald.
He reached out, grabbing Aziza by the throat and lifting her one-handed into the air. He peered at the dais, a sinister smile that was a bit too toothy, spread across his face as he flung the girl behind him. She smacked into the statue with a loud crack, and if she hadn’t been undead, I’d have worried about broken bones and internal injuries. I mean she could still have them, but I wasn’t exactly worried about her dying, ya know?
She slumped to the ground as Khufu placed his palm against the dais. Golden light, so blinding that I had to turn away to keep from going blind, filled the room. As it began to die down, a loud snarl echoed through the air.
I spun to see Thes slam into Khufu, all fangs and snapping jaws. They tumbled to the floor, rolling around for a moment before the ancient pharaoh drove his fist through Thes’ chest. It burst out the werewolf’s back with a spray of gore, but instead of screaming, or even acting like it hurt, Thes drove himself forward along the arm, claws struggling to find purchase on the mummy’s still wrapped flesh.
Behind them, Aziza was on her feet, hobbling toward the dais, and when I moved to get up, she shook her head at me and pointed to Connor. My eyes went wide. My mouth went dry. His unconscious body was still lying on the bench… directly beneath a thousand ton coffin straining the bindings that had lashed it to its perch high above.
I sprinted forward, calling on my magic to increase my speed as more cracks spread out across the stone. The smell of wild roses filled the air as I pumped my legs. The last time I’d been racing to save someone, I’d failed. I was not going to fail. I was not! With a horrific shriek, the sarcophagus broke free, and I dove forward, calling upon everything I had.
As I crashed into the ground next to Connor, and pain exploded through me, I threw myself on top of him, shielding his body with my own. Lavender energy burst from my body. The air became so heavy with the scent of wild roses that I could taste the springtime in the air. The huge coffin hit my magic and stopped, holding itself in midair as I leapt backward, the muscles in my legs straining to the limit. We slammed to the ground a few meters back as my magic gave way, and the end of the sarcophagus hit the ground with a sound like crackling thunder.
I rolled, pulling Connor’s limp body along with me as the huge coffin wobbled dangerously before toppling over like a felled tree. I barely threw my arms up in time, calling upon my magic one more time to shield us from the flying debris.
“Thes, we need to get out of here!” I cried, glancing around the now imploding room, as I hoisted Connor over my shoulder. My muscles shuddered as I met Thes’ eyes. He turned away from me as a huge stone broke free of the ceiling and crashed onto the dais, shattering it into a thousand pieces.
I leapt backward, crashing to the ground in front of the only door in the room as the Pharaoh, Khufu, grabbed Aziza by the throat and slammed her into the wall. Amethyst light exploded from her body as Thes leapt at them both. Behind me, the huge black door opened with a screech that reminded me of ancient castle gates.
“Thes, hurry,” was all I managed to say before I was sucked backward out of the ancient Egyptian prison.
Chapter 15
The door slammed shut as I hit the ground on the other side. Pain shot through me as breath whooshed from my lungs. My head snapped back violently as I tried to tuck myself into a roll. Unfortunately, I wound up getting tangled in Connor’s limp body and succeeded only in banging my hip hard on the marble floor. I cried out, biting my lip to stifle the pain as a thousand tons of rock broke free from the ceiling and crashed into the doorway.
The supports around the massive door buckled, pulling inward under a landslide of pale white stone that left it all but buried.
An explosion echoed from within the room. Soft pink smoke began to pour through the cracks around the door as I scrambled to my feet and moved toward the door. I grabbed the first chunk of rock and flung it over my shoulder as I called upon my power. A sinking dread filled my stomach as it hit the ground behind me with an empty thunk of finality.
Hardboiled: Not Your Average Detective Story (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 5) Page 12
